Obama downplays beer summit

President Barack Obama is doing his best to downplay expectations over his highly anticipated beer summit with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the officer who arrested Gates two weeks ago, Cambridge, Mass. Police Sgt. Jim Crowley.

“I am, I have to say, fascinated about the fascination with this evening,” Obama told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with the president of the Philippines.

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“I noticed this has been called the beer summit,” Obama said. “It’s a clever term but this is not a summit, guys. This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other. And that’s all it is.”

“This is not a university seminar,” said Obama. “It’s an opportunity to have some personal interaction when an issue has become so hyped and so symbolic that you lose sight of just the fact that these are people involved, including myself. All of whom are imperfect.”

Obama is scheduled to sit down in the Rose Garden Thursday evening with Gates and Crowley, who unexpectedly found themselves at the center of a racially-charged national controversy after Gates, a highly respected African American professor, was arrested at his own home for disorderly conduct following a report of a possible break-in. Gates suggested race played a role in his arrest by Crowley, who is white.

Obama initially faulted the police for acting “stupidly,” but he later said he’d chosen his words poorly and that both sides overreacted.

Just last week, Obama said last week that he viewed the controversy as a “teachable moment” for the country. But as the summit approached Thursday officials were exceedingly vague about what lessons or even what subjects the president hoped Americans would learn.

“I think many people would have hardly imagined something like this happening this time last week,” Gibbs said at the White House’s daily briefing for reporters. “The president talked to both of these men last week. They’re decent, honorable, good men. I think that kind of dialogue is what has to happen at every level of…our society if we’re going to make progress on issues that we've been dealing with for quite some time.”

Gibbs also tried to downplay the impression in some quarters that the gathering could be a milestone in American race relations.

“I don't think the president has outsized expectations that one cold beer at one table here is going to change massively the course of human history by any sense of the imagination,” Gibbs said.

There were also indications that the White House was trying to lower the political risks associated with the event. Photographers and reporters were expected to get only a brief look at the confab—an arrangement which prompted questions about whether the White House was undermining whatever educational value the session might have.

“I feel comfortable and the president feels comfortable with our coverage plans,” Gibbs said at the daily briefing for reporters. “To get together and talk about what's going on in this country is — is a positive thing, even if you're not able to hear each and every word of it.”